Short Sale in Kenwood for Cardio Surgeon

A CHANGE OF HEART: Doctor and his wife opt for short sale after market failure

By Dennis Rodkin

Published Feb. 4, 2011

KENWOODLIST $2 MILLION SALE $1.956 MILLION

Four years ago, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, the cardio surgeon Sudhir P. Srivastava and his wife, Elizabeth, paid $2.85 million for this 21-room stone mansion when he joined the staff at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Last fall, after he had moved to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, they sold the place for $1.956 million—only 68 percent of their 2007 purchase price.

Set on about half an acre, the house, built in 1892, has nine bedrooms and five-plus baths on three floors; the grounds include a rentable two-unit carriage house. Prior to the Srivastavas’ purchase, the building underwent an extensive rehab, which included installing a new roof and a large modern kitchen and updating the baths and all the mechanical systems, says Jan Smith, the @Properties agent who represented the property both in 2007 and in 2010. “It was a gut renovation of every bit of the 10,000 square feet [of space],” she says.

The Srivastavas put the house on the market in October 2008 for $2.995 million. “My clients kept hoping the market would come back, but it kept moving away from them,” Smith says. “[In mid-2010] they decided to go the short-sale route,” getting their lender’s approval to sell the residence for less than the $2.28 million mortgage. The county recorder lists the buyer as Ivan Moskowitz; a University of Chicago medical professor, he did not respond to a request for comment.